Here I am LIVE Blogging, Ankur Lal one of a closely related NASSCOM EMERGE community fellow and Sanjiv Mital from Saarthi Enterprises and Alok Mittal from Cannan Partners. this is surely going to be an interesting session.
Ankur Lal, CEO Infozech Software leads the session with Alok Mittal – Partner, Canaan Partners, Sanjiv Mital – CEO, Saarthi Enterprise.
Ankur starts by giving the example of a company which has grown from a 10 employee to a 400+ employee company with a revenue over 100 crores.
We have Ankur sharing abotu how the mobile industry is attempting the SaaS based model. Telecom procurement is what Ankur is talking about. What was it like 10 years back, Ankur takes the delegates back in time.
there was lot of outsourcing in procurement, but there was not much in management
SaaS kind of came in and changed all that and something of the similar sort happened in the mobile world. People started sourcing managed services rather that procurement and hence the story of someone like Airtel in India happened. when CAPEX combines with delivery capability it becomes better.
Last year Airtel went out to outsource customer care. It surely was a BIG step as when outsourcing started in the mobile world it was just the back end which was getting outsourced. Interestingly Ankur now talks about the VAS outsourcing space.
If you are selling into a telco, the picture in front of you is that you cant say I have equipment or software
We are now getting a good insight into where this all is heading by Ankur. A very major point that Alok has touched is the platform now. What it delivers, what value does it create etc. Alok says it all int erms of the evolving developer context. And well, there is the entire ppt which shows everything from the 80′s to 90′s and now the 2000 and what has happened, in terms of the technology.
Discussing technology how could have iPhone not have gotten mentioned, we have Alok talking about the iPhone and how the technology has leveraged Open Source. I am particularly interested in knowing more about this space.
With his closing remarks, Alok closes the session. I have been listening to Alok since a good time now and this was surely an interesting piece of gyan.
We now have Sanjiv Mital – CEO, Saarthi Enterprise, talking about The emerging business model. Interesting to know that Sanjiv invested into Bharti telesoft when it was going through a tought phase in 2001 and went ahead with a management buyout. What did he do which gave it the major push?
- Migrated the software services to VAS products
Sanjiv is talking about the traditional software business model which is followed generally. This is soemthign that I call a cost Plus model. When you do the same in a software as a service model, what you do is value based pricing.
You are not just worried about developing the product, installing and its over. You not only get revenue but you get high revenue. In bharti Telsoft we hence started a new revenue enhancemenet department. Sanjiv is essentially talking about hwo the entire businessm odel changes with SaaS, which is less to do with cost ad more to do with what value you deliver to the customer.
Interestingly, in my personal opinion, the cash Flow implications that Sanjiv is showing is surely an eye opener. Each bit is supported by the phases of the various steps yoru product goes through in the SaaS model.
As the consumers keep on using your service, your revnue goes up and in a small time your revenue could be a good part of your client’s earning
SaaS, is much easier to sell. What you are sayign is, I’ll make money only when you do. But the risk that you are taking is much more. It could be years when you start generating good profits. It could take fair amount of time when significant revenues start coming in.
Sanjiv is now talking about RBT, and how the moel got up. Interestingly Sanjiv is talking all surprises…how a large number of the consumers in the country subscribe to this concept. I can no less agree to Sanjiv as I am closely realted to a major telecom company which used RBT as a major concept.
Sanjiv says surely in the longer run SaaS pays off. All the companies we have talked about grew very significanlty in the longer run.
